If you are an Outlook user, some you have you might have noticed a change recently.
And it's a change you will either love or hate.
We received a call from a client the other day to say that Outlook looked weird. Things weren’t where they were supposed to be.
This isn’t an uncommon occurrence. Outlook can often revert to default settings and usually tweaking a setting or two will sort it.
The issue for the client was that the Navigation Pane had moved from the bottom, it’s usual location, to the side. The Navigation Pane is the bit that allows you to select whether you want to view emails, or calendars, or contacts etc.
Old Outlook with Navigation Pane at the bottom
Unfortunately, no amount of tweaking or changing of settings would move it. That’s because it’s a new Microsoft “improvement”.
The latest versions of Outlook have permanently moved the navigation pane so that it is on the left, rather than the bottom, mirroring the layout of the Outlook Web App. So it one of those things we’re going to have to get used to.
New Outlook with Navigation Pane at the side
It’s a feature we’ve been able to preview for a while. You may have a Coming Soon – Try It Now option on the top right of your Outlook window. Activate the slider, restart Outlook and you can enable this new feature. Slide it back to disable it. But that’s on older versions of Outlook – on the latest version you are stuck with it I’m afraid!
A final note – this applies to the Windows version of Outlook. I’ve not tested this on a Mac. Outlook for Mac generally has a different development cycle so it remains to be seen if this will be included in that.
